[Vanilla] GOTM 131 Final Spoiler

[neilmeister]

Sooooo, how did your first Vanilla outing in ages go? Are you too used to the over generosity of BtS resources to play old school vanilla?

 

[greatbeyond]

Well I thought I submitted my losing game but it appears I didn't. IIRC I ended up losing to Mansa who went to space sometime in the early 1900s. I went to the autolog to get details but the first half of the log was taken up with a game from 2016 and it doesn't show how my first try at this ended. Time to clear out some old logs I guess.

I believe I SIPd and getting BW early decided to take out some prior game frustration on Tokugawa who always causes problems. I spent too much time I'm sure and fell behind the AIs. MM expanded quickly and things were fairly well balanced between the AIs. There seemed to be a lot of religious intolerance between the AIs and several wars. I was able to keep MM's culture at bay and didn't lose too much territory to him. I was however slowly falling behind the AIs tech pace, with the exception of KK who had a lot of territory but seemed to be only slightly ahead of me in tech. In the late 1800s I attacked and took 2 of his cities and then took a short peace break and then attacked again and secured about half his territory. It was at this point that MM went to space.

I replayed this several times. It did take awhile to get back into the vanilla Civ4 frame of mind and I'm sure that hurt my performance.

In looking at the replay I noticed that the initial placement of Civs seemed to bunch us and MM together and there was a lot of space between Catherine and MM. Did you make any mods to the locations?

In various replays I went worker stealing from MM and/or Tokugawa, and then different strategies to eliminate both he and Tokugawa. One effect of crippling MM early on was that Catherine expanded like crazy and really dominated the southern part of the map.

Thanks for making this game.

 

[Deckhand]

Well I thought I submitted my losing game but it appears I didn't.

Not too late. Last day for submission is the tenth. Thanks for posting.

 

[Deckhand]

Didn't see a first spoiler thread.

a) to 1 AD
Paid too much attention to announcement thread advice and moved the warrior directly onto the gems to keep jungle from spreading to it.
Result was Mansa took two huts that should have been mine. I did get two huts of my own: 2 maps.

OK, my goal this game is to finally get my first fastest gotm domination, by way of a horse archer rush.
860bc discover HBR. oops I need archery (and hunting) before I can build the HAs

Successfully rush Toku and take Civil Service from Oracle. sorry, don't have dates handy.

After Toku, sent cavalry (8 HAs, 3 chariots) west. Mongols look too tough. Based on close proximity of Japan and Mali, I thought Rome or India would be reachable on other side of Mongolia. So army kept moving west. Finally reached Romans. Rome also seemed to tough. Captured Antium(?) and decided to raze it. Had losses capturing it and decided even if I could keep it, the distance maintenance would be a problem. Made peace soon after.

Felt like the guy that tried to capture two rabbits and ended with neither.

My economy was in bad shape. Oh wait, we are financial. I decided to recover economy and take Military Tradition with Liberalism. (so much for fast horse archer rush) Built lots of workers and they built lots of cottages. Also, we are industrious so did a bit of wonder building for fail gold.

b) final spoiler
Plan pretty much worked. Took nationalism from liberalism so I could freely trade civil service etc for more techs. Finished Taj about same time as learned MT.
Rome had declared war on me a while before which hadn't concerned me. But they arrived with a large stack the very same turn that I learned MT. I was able to upgrade one HA to cavalry for defense. (230 gold per, enuf cash for one; and 1/2t after that). I also whip 8 cavs that turn (had horse archers queued).

Long story short: make peace with Rome, build big cav army, conquer Mongols, send half army to Rome and half to Mali, attack both same time; meanwhile building lots of settlers and filling in all gaps. Declare on Russia after healed and two turns before reaching Dom limit.

 

[Cactus Pete]

Concur that protecting gems with warrior would have been a poor use of him. Did gems get overgrown in your test game, neil?

Interesting map. Really disappointed that there are so few submissions. Vanilla game greatly appreciated here!

 

[lymond]

Ha..I actually finished this one. Nice map, but a slog getting through these AIs. Always an adjustment playing Vanilla, especially after such a long time. I got a late domination win. Hopefully my scores are decent, but honestly have no idea how to gauge expectations. Conquest of the AI went much slower than expected, and really I should have pushed out a bit sooner. Actually took Machinery from Oracle. Got some good hut pops early and decided to get Chokes online asap. Thing is I should have used them sooner instead of trying to build with support units like cats and elies. Toku was a total cakewalk, but after that it got quite a bit harder. I eliminated KK with the cat/elie/choke combination, but waited for libbing MT to push on to Rome, who was tough. JC actually took back some cities from simply as he'd already been in war mode with Gandhi for a while, and I had to move reinforcements a long way. Still overall took out JC fairly easy, but he was tough.

Took out Cathy, but my bribes of Gandhi and MM on her kinda of backfired as they took some cities from her, but I took most of her stuff. A swath of land in South Central was unsettled at this point due to apparent razing of cities and just neglect, so I had to rush some settlers out. Push culture toward the end. It was real close getting that final land %, and I was trying to avoid fighting Gandhi or MM. Gandhi was teching lights out after a certain point - much better than MM.

In hindsight, I should have fought two-front wars and got rid of MM, who despite a some good early trading was otherwise an annoyance. Fastest Domination, my game was not. Vanilla emperor is fairly tough.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I don't recall popping much significant from Huts, probably Fishing and some Gold. Fishing could have meant no Engineering Lightbulb, had I obtained the correct Great People, so it could be seen as a downside, but I did not get the correct Great People and I did settle one City for a Clam Resource, so I figure that it worked out.

I did a great job of picking great Barb-spawn-busting locations with multiple Warriors and was surprised at how well it worked; I wasn't getting a single Barb coming my way. Of course, I finally clued in that the No Barbs setting was on, after which point I felt rather silly for missing out on a good land-grabbing opportunity.

So, I sent out my Warriors to explore and decided to Worker-steal from Gandhi. What could go wrong? Well, it seems that Vanilla AIs' Units have advanced radar that can seek you out; I managed to steal 1 Worker and build a few partial Road pieces, but lost my 3 or 4 Warriors on Hills Forest squares to Gandhi's heat-seeking Units, and lost the stolen Worker with the last Warrior, so that plan died rather quickly.

With the Japanese on one side of us and Mali on the other side, it seemed like our options were limited; if we went to war with Mali, we'd probably have no foreign Trade Routes for quite a while: Japan wasn't Opening Borders and when Toku finally did so, he promptly closed them due to conflicting Religions. Unlike in Easier BtS, in Vanilla, AIs actually review their Open Borders agreements from time-to-time against their Attitude toward you and will Close Borders with you if you no longer meet their desired Attitude level; contrast that behaviour with BtS, where AIs will never Close Borders with you, a fact which opens up a lot of possible abuses in BtS.

So, war with Japan it was, and Julius joined in on the fun. Julius ended up having more success than I did and raised about 5 Japanese Cities; Julius refused to be bribed off for a price that I could afford. Fortunately, Julius didn't keep a single Japanese City, so I was able to later refill the land--capturing Cities would have been more efficient, but being able to resettle the land without Barbs to worry about was a reasonable alternative.

Khan gave me trouble by beating me to The Pyramids by about 3 turns. He was well-liked, but he was next in my way and took the prize that I wanted. So, I took the diplo hits and pressed on toward him.

I decided to go for Space with Cultural as a backup option, so I had a balance between warring for land, spreading Religions for Catherdals, and Wonder-spamming.

In amongst my Wonder-spamming, I also missed out on getting The Great Library, which Khan had also built. The result was that I did not manage to get a Great Scientist until I was the first to learn Physics; this fact was pretty painful for a Financial Leader on a map without very strong Food locations nearby, such that the only real Cottage-spamming that I did was in my capital where I didn't have an Academy.

While I had been busy with Khan, Julius and Catherine had eaten up portions of Gandhi. So, I decided to make a base of operations in Gandhi's land, taking a couple of his Cities before turning my eyes on Rome.

I did like the subtle change of the map from a typical ring-shape that you see in Inland Sea with the extra isthmus (land bridge) between Khan and Gandhi. One small little change like that (whether done manually or by the map generator) can breathe significant new life into a well-used map type.

Julius was a monster; he had super-large and heavily-promoted stacks with mixed arms. Chokos vs his Praets would have been nice, but Julius had Ivory close to home, so he had large stacks of War Elephants mixed in with his Praetorians, making him a formidable opponent. I finally stopped trying to rely on Chokos and went for Military Tradition, despite wanting to skip it on my way to Space.

With help from Gandhi, Catherine, and Mansa, I was able to whittle down Julius' power in 3 successive wars until at last he was defeated and his lands were mine.

From then on it, it was mostly about keeping Mansa and Catherine sufficiently happy to prevent them from declaring war on me while I went to Space, while simultaneously spreading Religions all around and building a lot of Temples, in order to be able to build all of the Cathedrals in 3 Cities as my backup plan.

I came close to the Domination Land Limit at the end and had to give some land back to Gandhi, but otherwise, it was smooth sailing into the stars.

Thanks go out to the admins for yet another fun game!

The map was set up nicely, and although we didn't get Protective's free Promos on our Cho-Ko-Nus, the Traits that we did get were far better. Vanilla seems to be a well-balanced expansion; you really have to manage items much more tightly, such as Happiness (no Vassals/Colonies), no real option for a Temple-based economy (no University of Sankore, no Apostolic Palace, and half of the Gold for The Spiral Minaret), and not as much reward for taking over the map when not going for Domination (no Corporations).

Also, Civic-switches without Anarchy-free Golden Ages really hurt when taking a lot of land. I lost 3 or 4 turns to Anarchy for just switching into State Property. Then, I built The UN just to be able to get myself into Emancipation without another 4 turns of Anarchy.

@lymond: I believe that I had about 151K for Final Score at one point and could have won with a UN Diplo Victory. By the time that I did win, my Final Score was close to 130K.


As feedback, I will say that for an older expansion where some users need to pop in a CD, and when we aren't running Vanilla games back-to-back, especially on a Standard Sized map, a 2-month deadline would have been appreciated. I had to rush the last 60-odd turns just to get a submission completed on time and made several mistakes in the process, including accidentally removing a Space Ship Part from a build queue before I noticed, delaying my victory by about 5 turns. Still, it was a blast of fun and it's great to see that we can still breathe some life into Vanilla!

 

[lymond]

@Dhoomstriker Kudos on your fine spawnbusting! Raging No Barbs is a bear

Yeah, JC was really tough for me as well. I even bribed Gandhi back on him a couple of turns before I attacked, but he still directed all his WEs and Praets back at me. I took 3 ceasefires with him.

Vanilla does have some interesting aspects to it. You really have to almost totally rethink the things you do in BTS, so it is like playing a different game. However, the war exhaustion is just way to brutal, and I don't think they really learned there lesson in Warlords either.